The streets are full of armed men. They are among us. There are lots of them. I leave my house. In front of the supermarket there’s a security guard, pistol, bullet-proof vest. On the corner, at the bank, an armed man, blue beret, he observes first to the right, then left, suspicious. I speed up and move towards the metro. First there’s the ambassador of a far off country, near the entrance an army truck with the engine kept ticking over. A soldier has his machine gun well in sight, pointed down. Is it loaded? And if a volley of shots goes off?
I’m off the metro. Escalators, a glimpse of the sky up there. Straight away, in the square, one Police car and two cars of the Carabinieri all lined up side by side. Four police officers and ten carabinieri all fully armed. One is smoking a cigarette. A siren, a car with a light flashing with more armed men of the Security Forces on their way to a probable disturbance. I go straight ahead, along the street, past the shops and I come across two armed municipal guards talking to each other and an urban police officer with a white truncheon and a pistol in its holster. I cross the road at the crossroads, another two banks, another two armed guards on duty, loaded down with weapons. Waiting at the traffic lights, a patrol car of carabinieri, they set off as the green light appears. It wasn’t for me. Three grey uniforms of the Finance Police appear among the customers of a shop. In other places, the Finance Police are not armed, but they are in Italy.
Apart from the stretch on the metro I’ve covered not more than 600 metres and I’ve seen more armed men than in an action film. I’m counting up in my mind. Three armed guards, two military personnel, eight carabinieri, six police officers, three Finance Police, one urban police officer, two municipal guards making a total of 24. A pistol or a machine gun every 25 metres. And that’s on normal days. On the exceptional days, however, that are coming with ever greater frequency, by now one a week, together with the demonstrations and the events, hundreds of men are milling around with helmets, truncheons and guns in the various squares. On those luminous days of democracy, with the State lined up to protect us, the percentage of arms is at least one per square metre.